Editing Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (section)

=====''Bug Vaudeville'' (1921)=====
[[File:Winsor McCay (1921) Bug Vaudeville.webm|thumb|alt=Early animated film ''Bug Vaudeville''|''Bug Vaudeville'']] The series title is pluralized for this film. In the fantasy ''Bug Vaudeville'', a tramp comes out from a group of meticulously drawn trees and falls asleep, muttering that cheese cakes give him strange dreams. A series of bugs put on performance after performance against highly detailed and realistic backgrounds.{{sfn|Telotte|2010|p=52}} The performance ends with a spider who grabs a silhouetted member of the audience and eats him whole.{{sfn|Telotte|2010|p=53}}

The film was released around September 12, 1921,{{sfn|Telotte|2010|p=51}} and draws from McCay's experiences in the  worlds of the circus and vaudeville.{{sfn|Canemaker|2005|p=197}} The film is presented as a vaudeville show, though without the stage interaction McCay used in ''[[Gertie the Dinosaur]]''.{{sfn|Telotte|2010|p=51}} Film critic [[Andrew Sarris]] praised ''Bug Vaudeville'' as his favorite of McCay's films for "the linear expressiveness of the drawings and the intuitive rhythm of the acts". Sarris wrote that a director like [[Federico Fellini]] "would be honored by such insight into the ritual of performance".{{sfn|Canemaker|2005|p=198}}